lococession
by melignomon
Summary: The Ponds have some very strange and wonderful family Christmases in Leadworth.  Amy/Rory, River/Doctor, AGMGtW-compliant. Sheer shameless fluff, with sprinkles of domestic.
1. 2011

So I was working on this as one story, but it was getting long and unwieldy, so I decided to split it into chapters. The chapters will be mostly unrelated and in mostly chronological order.

As far as canon goes: these are more or less canonical as of "A Good Man Goes to War", though I expect everything I write this summer will get Jossed in the fall. That's the price I pay for picking such a convoluted series to fangirl over.

Warning: **Spoilers** for River's identity, although I'll be astounded if anyone on the Internet has managed to avoid that knowledge for this long. Also warning: this is pure, unadulterated fluff. Read at own risk. ^_^

_Lococession_: A place for giving.

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><p>Their last night on the TARDIS, Amy and Rory have tea in the console room with the Doctor and River. They're all just joking around, laughing and talking like they normally would after an adventure more restful than terrifying. No one's said anything about leaving the TARDIS, but everyone somehow knows that the next place they land will be Leadworth, and Amy and Rory will be gone after that and it will all be all right. Rory doesn't know how they know; the Doctor certainly hasn't done or said anything to the effect that he'd like them to leave. If anything he'd been more than usually - <em>attentive<em>, is the best word Rory can come up with. Maybe it's the TARDIS translating emotion and accumulation for them the same way she translates language.

But it's all right, it really is. At least, Rory is all right - he's had adventure, lots of adventure, and danger too, and while part of him would gladly run with the Doctor forever, there's another, calmer part of him that is grateful for the chance to slip back into reality. To have proven to it that reality is still there.

Amy's been a bit quiet all evening, but Rory can't really blame her, and he doesn't think anything of it until the Doctor had just finishes a strange and rambling story about the amphibious rocks of Arcturus 9. The punchline isn't funny, but Rory laughs anyway, and he's expecting Amy to laugh too. But she doesn't laugh; instead she lunges at the Doctor, grabbing his lapels and backing him up against the railing, avoiding his flailing hands with expert grace.

"Amy, what are you -" the Doctor and Rory begin to splutter more or less in sync, but Amy stops them with a shake of her head.

"One rule," she says to the Doctor. "One tiny little rule, couldn't be simpler. You are going to come back."

The Doctor smiles, one of those slow, huge smiles he reserved just for Amy, though even Rory can see that it doesn't totally reach his eyes. "Of course I'll come back, Pond, I always come back," he says lightly. A long moment goes by, and the Doctor slides his fingers over Amy's, gently trying to loosen her grip on his jacket, but she isn't letting go.

"No," she says at last. Her eyes narrow, and the Doctor begins to fidget under that unrelenting gaze. "No, you're not getting away with that. I mean it, Doctor. You're going to come back to visit us, in Leadworth, on Christmas. Every Christmas."

The Doctor darts a glance over Amy's head at Rory - looking for help, maybe, or trying to silently ask whether or not he should be scared. Rory shrugs and mouths 'I'm with her', then tries not to grin at the panic that flashes through the Doctor's eyes.

"Stop that," Amy growls, giving the Doctor's jacket a shake and drawing his attention back to her. "We've traveled with you for all this time, done all these things - I'm not having you vanish for fourteen years again. Especially if you're marrying my daughter. And you -" she drops the Doctor's jacket and whirls around to point at River, who's ready for her with a solemn expression but laughter in her eyes. "Melody River Pond, you're coming too. You're going to drag him if you have to, understand?"

"Yes, mother," River says, doing her best impression of the dutiful daughter. Then she breaks into a real grin. "Don't worry, Amy, we do."

"Good." Amy surveys both of them for a moment, then whirls around to hug the Doctor. This time she isn't quick enough to surprise him, and he throws his arms around her and hugs her with such single-minded focus that he bangs his elbow on the railing, and might have toppled over it in a stiff breeze.

"You're our family," Rory says, because he feels like someone should say out loud what Amy's telling the Doctor, what she always tries to tell him with hugs like that. "We can't just let our family disappear."

"And I won't have you being late," Amy says, drawing back from the Doctor a little and tossing her hair over one shoulder, her eyes glistening. "You've got a bloody time machine - if you get it wrong, then try again until you get it right."

"Hey. Course I will," the Doctor says softly. He brushes the tips of his fingers across Amy's cheek, trying to wipe away the tears that haven't fallen yet. "Pond family Christmases, that's new, never done a family Christmas before. I wouldn't miss it for the universe."

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><p>The Doctor drops them off in 2011, "somewhere in the middle bits". His vague tone and flailing gestures don't fool Rory anymore; the TARDIS doors open on the tiny backyard of his and Amy's house, on a cool spring morning just before the sun has crested the tops of the pine trees, when the air is heavy and sweet and birds are beginning to twitter unseen in the hedges. Rory couldn't have picked a better time or place to come back to Earth.<p>

In the silence that rushes in to fill the space where the TARDIS had been, Amy's hand finds Rory's. For a long moment neither of them can do anything but breathe, as the sudden _hereness_ and _nowness_, the weight of their native planet and its hectic spin, make them both dizzy.

When the dizziness has passed, they unlatch the little gate and go around to the front door. It's unlocked - most doors are, in Leadworth - and, except for two days' worth of mail on the step, everything is exactly as they left it all those lifetimes ago. There's a Laurel and Hardy disc still in the DVD player, and even a kettle still on the stove, heavy with cold water - and on the counter next to it, the TARDIS-blue envelope with stamps from everywhere.

Their whole world is waiting for them too, just as they left it, and Rory is surprised by how quickly they get used to a more-or-less ordinary human life. In the two months between his honeymoon and America he'd been getting a bit more respect and recognition at the hospital, and before long he finds himself promoted to Head Nurse. Amy is delighted to find that her tiny little dad owns a chain of flower shops across the county, and she takes shifts at the one in Leadworth. It's boring as hell most of the time, she tells Rory, but at least some of the blooms remind her of the shades of grass on the planets they've visited, and that's something.

In July they go to the beach, and not a single thing is dangerous or menacing about it. It's almost too relaxing for them to bear.

In October the leaves fall off the oak in the neighbor's yard, and night opens up between the branches, a patch of brilliant starry sky. Rory starts finding Amy outside at strange hours of the night, staring up into the cheerful twinkle of unimaginable distance; but he doesn't say anything, just brings her a coat or a mug of hot cocoa, and soon it's become a settled habit for both of them. In the evenings of late autumn, while the neighbors relax indoors and watch the TVs that flicker blue through their windows, Amy and Rory Pond sit on the back step, huddled in blankets, and watch the stars grow brighter. Occasionally, they speak.

It snows on December 24th, the best kind of snow, huge fat flakes that stick to everything, even the salted asphalt of the road. Amy convinces both their families that they want to spend their first Christmas Day as a married couple alone, just the two of them, so they get up early like five-year-olds and open the presents they got for each other and then spend the rest of Christmas morning on the sofa, watching old movies until Amy gets tired of Rory's running commentary on the advent of the film projector and makes him put on the Harry Potter series instead. Around nightfall they make whatever food is left in the house, and by the time they're done the snow is knee-deep and irresistible, so they go out and have a snowball fight, and Rory just about manages to convince himself that Amy has forgotten all about the Doctor's promise to come back, that they'll be able to both go to bed happy after the best Christmas he's ever had.

Then he hears her sigh while they're taking off their gloves and heavy boots, and he knows that that's idiotic. Of course she remembers. And now she's heartbroken and so is he, to be honest, and he feels like he hasn't felt for years, his heart too tight and his cheeks burning with the desire to box the ears of the man he loves most in all the cosmos.

"Amy..." he starts to say, as they come back into the warmth of the kitchen and she crosses to the window, her hair dark with melted snow. "Amy, I just..."

His phone goes off, clattering against the countertop. He flips it open and stares at the text for a minute. "It's from Jeff. Why is Jeff texting me? How does he even have -"

"What does it say?"

"'Turn on the news,'" Rory reads. He looks up to trade skeptical glances with Amy, but Amy's not there, she's already in the living room digging through the sofa cushions for the remote.

"...and it's certainly very strange for a Christmas miracle," the announcer is saying. "Sightings have been reported from all around the world, just hours apart, yet none within a day's travel of each other. Last seen in Belfast, the mysterious blue box has also attracted attention today by appearing on top of the Eiffel Tower, nearly clipping the wing of a 747 preparing to in land in New York City, and crashing through a row of shops at a market in Mumbai. Here now is an expert on UFO theory - tell us, Dr. Harvin, could Santa be behind this...?"

A sound like the breath of giants, like the singing of great gears, like space being crumbled into a ball and tossed aside, screeches out from the garden.

Amy rushes for the door but Rory beats her there, throwing it open just in time to see the TARDIS materialize on their front walk, sitting impossibly on top of the snow. The door swings open and there's the Doctor beaming out at them, his hair sticking in all directions and his face smudged with soot. "Ah-ha!" he shouts. "I knew we'd get it right eventually! Wouldn't miss it, I said! C'mere, Pond!" He bounds out of the TARDIS, arms outstretched, and falls flat into the snow.

"Happy Christmas," River says, appearing in the doorway. "We are in the right time, aren't we? The way he flies this thing, I can never be sure -"

"Yeah, you are," Amy says, breathless from laughing.

"Perfect timing," Rory adds, then wades into a snowbank to haul the flailing Doctor out.

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><p>The next chapter should be up relatively soon. Reviews are always appreciated.<p> 


	2. 2012

Short chapter tonight, because the next two are much longer. Hopefully I'll have the next one up sometime this week.

Thanks for reading!

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><p>The second year Amy's mother refuses to be put off by any pleading or excuses, so the Pond family Christmas is a massive affair, with Amy's parents and Aunt Sharon, Aunt Sharon's boyfriend, his two little boys (Patrick, 6, and Donald, 8), Rory's parents, his half-sister Lauren, and her husband and daughter Amanda.<p>

The Doctor is wearing some kind of bright green overcoat and River is young, younger than Amy or Rory has ever seen her; she looks to be about Amy's age, with her hair pulled back and her fingertips stained dark blue with ink. "Sorry, I've just come from school," she says when Amy drags her into the kitchen and demands to know what's going on. "I'm in the middle of my archaeology dissertation on the crystal embalming matrices of the Atraxi, and they're big on fieldwork there. I feel like I haven't slept in weeks." Her smile is hesitant, even shy, so different from the River Amy knows – until she realizes with a shock that this isn't River, this is Melody, just a kid taking a break from the 51st-century university that the Doctor enrolled her in to come home for the holidays.

"Oh – good," Amy manages to say, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. She can't think of anything else to say, so she holds out her arms to hug this smart, strong, brilliant girl, the daughter whose childhood she might never see, who she knows will grow up to be a legend among the stars and demons of the universe. In the kitchen of the big blue house in Leadworth, while her whole big stupid family are arguing about film stars in the next room, Amy holds her daughter and can't think of a single place in the universe more wonderful than this.

"We're so proud of you, your dad and I," she says, letting Melody go.

"Uh, that's a bit of an understatment, actually," Rory says from the kitchen door. He's wearing a huge, lumpy knitted sweater decorated with stars that are more enthusiastic than recognizable, and Melody and Amy both burst out laughing at the sight of him.

"Yeah, laugh if you like, but the Doctor's got one for you too," he says to Amy, lifting one arm to show the sweater sleeve trailing past his fingertips. "You might want to go find him, actually - last I heard he was asking for you. I'll give Mel the grand tour, shall I?"

"Yeah, of course," Amy says lightly, and heads back out into the living room. She tries her absolute best not to hear Rory beginning to ask Melody whether she's had any boyfriends at school, but doesn't quite manage it.

It turns out that the Doctor had been looking for her, but that was ages ago; since then he'd had a glass and a half of eggnog, taught the kids how to do a dance he claimed to be from the third ring of Saturn in the 23rd century, had yet another glass of eggnog, spent forty-five minutes reassuring Amy's mother that 2012 was nothing to worry about, the Mayan calendars were usually spot-on but he'd gone back to take a look at this one and there was a decimal out of place, should have read snake-egg-circley thing-jaguar when in fact it read ghost-pyramid-snake-egg-skull, so the world wasn't going to end if he had something to say about it, and he usually did, trust him, 2013 is going to be a smashing year, and by the time Amy finds him he's snoring on the sofa with his green coat draped over his head.

She sighs and leans over him to pull the coat down so the collar wraps snugly around his shoulders. He looks so young and foolish, sleeping there in the middle of a Williams-Pond Christmas board game tournament with none of his ancient Time Lord gravitas about him. Without thinking, she kisses him on the forehead, on the spot where he's pressed his head against hers so many times as a reassurance in the midst of grave danger.

"Thanks for bringing her here," she whispers.

"Ghnnjzzb," the Doctor murmurs, and cuddles deeper into his coat.


	3. 2013

2013 is a smashing year, not least Christmas Day, which begins with a smash that rattles the windows and sets dogs and car alarms howling over half the neighborhood.

Amy and Rory make it out to the front porch in less than five minutes, but Mrs. Harrison from across the street is already standing there with her cane raised to start pounding on their door. "Amelia!" she squawks as soon as Amy opens it. "Whatever you've gotten up to this time, I won't stand for it!"

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," Amy breathes, looking over Mrs. Harrison's shoulder at the TARDIS lying on its side in the middle of the road. Its doors are facing upwards, leaking gray curlicues of smoke into the clear predawn sky.

"What is it? Some kind of prank?" Mrs. Harrison demands, as Rory edges his way around his wife and carefully shifts their neighbor aside.

"No! No," Amy says hurriedly, as other faces begin to appear at windows up and down the street and the TARDIS just lies there, smoking gently but doing nothing else, at the end of a long shallow scrape in the pavement. "It's… um… art," she declares, at the same moment that Rory offers "…repairs?"

"Hmph," Mrs. Harrison grumbles, expressing her complete disbelief in them and her contempt for them as disrespectful hooligans, but she seems to be satisfied and turns around to return to her own house. A few of the other neighbors have come out onto their front steps to look at the strange blue box, but nothing seems to be happening, and the wail of car alarms in the distance dies down, one at a time.

Then the TARDIS doors explode outward and the so does the Doctor, just a whirl of hair and thrashing limbs being borne up by a torrent of golden light.

"No," Rory mutters, "definitely art."

The light reaches the height of Amy and Rory's bedroom window and starts thrashing, whipping back and forth like a pine tree in a high wind, with its trunk vanishing into the TARDIS and the Doctor clinging to its tip, shouting something incomprehensible. Amy starts towards it, not sure what she can do but needing to do something, but before she makes it two steps the column of light gives a particularly vicious twang and throws the Doctor off. He lands hard on the pavement and rolls, then jumps to his feet, impossibly unhurt.

"Doctor!" Amy shouts, as the golden light grows higher, drawing itself up out of the TARDIS until it hangs unsupported in the air. The Doctor is still shouting at it, and it curls downwards towards him, bending like a glittering snake to flick forked lightning at him.

"_Safe_!" the Doctor roars. The light doesn't react, just hangs there shimmering, and Amy starts to see that it isn't light at all but crystals, some kind of flock of crystal shards all hanging together and catching the beginning of the sunrise.

"Safe," the Doctor repeats, "we're safe here! Scan around, see where we've landed!" He throws out his arms, taking in all of the Leadworth, England, Earth. "Look at that house! Look who lives there!" he shouts, pointing to Amy and Rory. "That's the Last Centurion, and that – that is Amelia Pond! Nothing can get to you here! Here - we are - protected."

The thing hangs there, sparkling and undulating gently. The coiled menace and winking facets make it look like otherworldly offspring of a viper and a chandelier. Amy wonders how it can even hear the Doctor, let alone understand him.

Then the front segment, that Amy has been thinking of as the head though there's no ears or eyes or mouth that she can see, swings away from the Doctor and towards Amy and Rory. It inspects them thoroughly for a long minute - there's no expression, just a wall of crystal shards, but Amy knows inspecting when she sees it - and then ripples all over, once. She can't tell whether it's a shudder of disgust or a nod of approval, and she doesn't have time to think about it because suddenly the creature is heading right for her, looping and slithering through the air like a great glittering eel. Instinctively, she grabs the snow shovel leaning against the railing, though it's a cheap plasticky one from the drugstore and would probably crack if used to break glass.

"Amy! Put that down!" the Doctor snaps. The front of the creature has just about reached the porch, and Amy can sense Rory edging up behind her, braced for trouble; but just before the creature gets close enough to touch, it starts dissolving. The individual crystal shards shoot out in all directions like droplets from a jet of water hitting a wall, with a sound like the breath of a breeze through windchimes.

When the whole creature is dispersed, Amy dares to step down into the street, towards the Doctor, who's staring intently at the front of her house. She turns around to look, and sees the glittering golden crystals lined up in neat rows on her windowsills, dangling from the gutters and the edge of the roof, the perfect alien Christmas lights. Some of them are even moving, inching between the windows like transparent glowworms.

"Look at that! Sanctuary accepted!" says the Doctor. Amy turns back to find him grinning like a loon. "'It curled once about the house, and fell asleep.' That's Eliot's - oh, I should go visit him, old T.S. I always knew he had a British heart. But Amy! Hello!" He tumbles forward and sweeps her up into a hug. "Sorry about the mess," he says into her hair. "That's the pre-Dravidian Conglomerate, got caught in a bit of a chase, set the TARDIS for safety and this is where she landed. Rory!" He lets Amy go and darts across to Rory, engulfing him in tweed. "Hello, charmed I'm sure," he says over Rory's shoulder to Mrs. Harrison.

"L-likewise," Mrs. Harrison croaks.

"Hang on, so you've got aliens chasing you here? You're bringing an alien invasion to our house?" Rory asks. "Again?"

"Let 'em come," Amy growls, retrieving the shovel from the sidewalk and brandishing it as best she can. "Let's see how far they get. What is it, Doctor, Cyberthings? Daleks?"

"No!" the Doctor says, releasing Rory. "No, no, got that all sorted, no one's coming, we're fine. Rory! Now listen, it's been - oh - seven and three-eighths of a minute, the old respiratory bypass has been pumping away and it's about to fail, bit of turbulence, the TARDIS atmosphere is poisonous to bipeds right now so don't go poking about, but the filter should take care of it. Give it twenty minutes. Normal human resuscitation should do the trick, but don't forget the extra heart. Oh, and, sorry about the police."

There are sirens getting closer. Amy can hear them, now that she's paying attention. "Doctor..." she groans, letting the shovel hit the pavement with a clack.

"Hang on - resuscitate the TARDIS?" Rory asks, his brow furrowing as he tries to follow the Doctor's babbling brook of consciousness.

"No. Amelia -" he swings around to point an accusing finger at her. "_Don't worry_. That's an order." He turns back to Rory, fingers twiddling nervously. "Sorry about this," he says, and passes out.

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><p>Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated. ^_^<p> 


	4. 2018

As people who have read my other fic might have noticed, I'm using a bit of a different style for this one: I'm trying to be a bit more streamlined and dialogue-based, with fewer lengthy descriptive passages. I'm partly doing it because I like this story to be focused more on the domestic and less on the fantastic, because I love that element of the show, and I'm partly doing it to see if I can. ^_^ But it is a bit of a new style for me, and this story is sadly unbeta'd, so I apologize for when it gets clunky or awkward. I hope you can enjoy it anyway.

Thanks for reading!

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><p>"And that," Amy concludes, "is why we're going on a trip this Christmas. Well – that, and the living fireworks he set off the year you were born. And the 'star' he tried to ignite last year."<p>

Arthur stares at her, his eyes wide. "Did Uncle Doctor die?"

"'Course he didn't die, you've met 'im," Amy says. "Although - I see your point. Well, no, he didn't die, he just needed some help breathing. Daddy got him all sorted in no time."

"Did he get arrested? Did _you_ get arrested?"

"Nearly," says Amy. "We held off the coppers with the psychic paper until River could get there. I'm sure she'll tell you the story if you ask nicely."

"What's psychic paper?"

"It's a sort of card that shows you what you're thinking. It's kind of complicated - Uncle Doctor will show you when he gets here," Amy says. She ruffles Arthur's mouse-brown hair (not ginger - the Doctor's moaned about how it's a tragedy that he isn't ginger, Amy's son should be ginger, and she's sure that if she'd let him go on he would have offered to give her some kind of alien hair tonic to make him ginger). She raises her voice to be heard over the clattering coming from the kitchen. "Oi, Rory! Are you ready yet? He said it would be just one trip, you don't need to pack the whole house!"

"Yeah, but it's the Doctor," Rory says, appearing in the doorway with a duffel bag in one hand and a towel slung over his shoulder. His hair is actually sticking up in little spikes, he's been mussing and worrying at it so much. Amy hasn't seen him so tense since the day Arthur was born, when he'd spent three hours inspecting the hospital windows to make sure they would be impregnable to Headless Monks. "Who knows what one trip could turn into?" he goes on. "And it's Arthur's first time-travel trip, he's only five - what if we get attacked by aliens? Or robots? Or what if the TARDIS goes all wonky and he hits his head, or falls in the swimming pool, or - "

"Rory, he'll be fine. He's a Pond, he's a natural time-traveler. Aren't you?"

"Williams," Rory says automatically, but he heads back into the kitchen rather than stay and argue about it. "I just want to be sure we're prepared for everything."

"Too late!" Amy cries, as the whooshing, squealing, rasping, beautiful noise of the TARDIS engines rattles the windows.

"The closet!" Arthur shouts. He scrambles off the couch and dashes down the hall with his mother close behind. The closet door opens onto a wall of solid wood, the bluest blue ever, and a pair of white windows spilling light. Then those doors open, and the Doctor's head pops out, his expression solemn.

"Ah, Arthur, just the man I was looking for," he says gravely. "Have you been good this year?"

"Yes, Uncle Doctor!"

"Ooh, Uncle Doctor, I like that, always wanted to be an uncle," the Doctor says. He grins at Amy, his eyes sparkling, then clears his throat puts his serious face back on. "Ahem. Have you been listening to your mum and dad?" he asks Arthur. "They're brilliant, you know, your mum and dad. Always to be listened to, except about bedtime. I find that grownups are always unreasonable about bedtime, don't you think?"

Arthur hesitates. He glances up at Amy, then back at the Doctor, and a shy smile spreads over his face. "Yes, Uncle Doctor."

"Ah, good," the Doctor says. "Stay right there, Arthur, Amy, there's someone I'd like you to meet."

He ducks back inside the TARDIS, letting the door swing shut behind him. There's a thump from the end of the hall and Rory appears, lugging a duffel bag and a small suitcase. "Where is he, have I missed anything?" he asks. "Has he locked us out again, is that it?"

"Will you stop worrying?" Amy says. She takes the duffel from his hand and tosses it against the side of the TARDIS, then grabs his collar and pulls him in for a brief kiss. "We're waiting to meet someone," she tells him.

"Oh, good," Rory says, just as the TARDIS doors swing open again.

The Doctor is standing there, holding the hand of a golden-haired little girl who looks to be about seven or eight. "Amy, Arthur, Rory," he says slowly, "This is Cobalt-perennials-wandering-under-horizons. Or you can call her Digamma. She's...my daughter."

"Our daughter," River says as she joins the Doctor and the little girl in the doorway. "Sorry to surprise you like this. We'll come to tell you as soon as we find out about her, which will be...oh, I'd say about six months, your time."

Silence. The Doctor smiles nervously, but the smile fades as the color drains from Rory's face and he starts looking a bit unsteady on his feet. "Oh," he says hoarsely, after an awkward minute. "That means - " He shakes his head, pulling himself together, and crouches down to shake his granddaughter's small hand. His voice trembles, but his hand is steady. "Hello, Digamma. It's very, very nice to meet you." He turns back to his son. "Say hello, Arthur."

"Hi," Arthur says shyly. He waves and leans into Amy's legs, unsure whether to move forward or try and hide.

"Significant cultural greetings, Earth-family," Digamma says, just as shyly, in a clear sweet voice. She looks ready to say something else, then pauses, scowling. "No! Wait, I've got it - Christmas! Happy Christmas!" She looks anxiously up at River. "Is that right? That's what it said in the human-culture matrix..."

"That's perfect, sweetie," River says. "Now why don't you and Arthur go and play? You should have enough time to show him the new waterfall in the vortex garden before we get to Emplic."

Digamma leans out of the TARDIS doors and holds out a hand. Amy gently nudges Arthur forward, and then the two of them are gone, scampered off into the depths of the TARDIS. "Well! That's all sorted," the Doctor says brightly, clapping his hands together. "Come along Ponds, there'll be plenty of time for everyone to get acquainted on Emplic - well, it's me, there'll always be plenty of time. Comes standard with a time machine." He pats the side of the TARDIS fondly, then pauses. "Do try not to fall over, Rory, there's a good nurse. Now if you'll just collect your baggage, we'll be off-"

"Shut up, you idiot," River says with fond exasperation. "They've just found out they've got a grandchild, try and give them one minute to adjust. Go recalibrate the thermotemporal rotor clamps, they've been shuddering lately. And make sure the children haven't activated the vortex generator!" she calls after the Doctor as he vanishes into the TARDIS.

Rory makes a strained noise halfway between a question and a plea. "Don't worry, they'll be fine," River assures him hastily. "They can't do any damage from the vortex garden." A resounding crack booms out from the interior of the ship. River winces. "Well, no real damage, anyway. The Doctor's right, though, we'd best be going soon. Our scanner picked up a rather excessive police presence around the house, though goodness knows what they're waiting for. Is this yours, this suitcase?"

"There's another one," Rory says, still a bit dazed. "A big blue one. I left it in the kitchen..."

"I'll get it," Amy says quickly. Rory, already burdened with the suitcase and duffel bag, gives her a grateful look. "Two minutes," she promises as River ushers Rory into the ship.

Amy slips down the hall and around the corner and closes the kitchen door behind her. She presses her forehead to the smooth wood, closing her eyes, breathing deep for a long minute. Her granddaughter - an eight-year-old granddaughter appearing out of the Vortex. For a moment everything goes cold; it's the same numbed disbelief that had gripped her in the hangar of Demon's Run so long ago, when a grown and mysterious woman she'd barely known had turned out to be her daughter.

But it isn't the same. Six months from now, when the soft summer sun is glowing white on the tiles, River's going to land the TARDIS in the back garden and come into that kitchen, younger and more nervous than she is now, and she'll tell Amy everything. This golden-haired little girl will have her first birthday party in Leadworth (before her parents take her to celebrate at the birth of some distant sun). It'll be all right. Amy takes another deep breath, and is surprised to realize that she's shaking. Still, she smiles, as the joy of having a new gorgeous granddaughter begins to rise over the shock of time travel.

"Hello, Amy," says the Doctor.

Amy whirls around. The Doctor is sitting at her kitchen table, his hands out in front of him cupping nothing, his eyes all but hidden under the fringe of his hair. He doesn't say anything for a moment, just waits, and as Amy's heart slows down from a frantic stutter she starts to see what he wants her to see; the scorch mark on one elbow, the faintest white tracery of a scar over his left eye, the sallow cheeks and nervous fingers. She turns her head a fraction, enough to see the TARDIS - _a_ TARDIS - in her living room, crowding between the couch and the front window. "Doctor," she breathes. "It's you, yeah? But not the same you that's with the others." She slides into a chair across from him, copying the way he holds his hands, meeting his flooded eyes. "You're from the future."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor says softly, and his voice is strange and flooded too. "Everything's a bit fuzzy right now, I'm not...thinking clearly. Meant to come to a year I haven't done yet."

"What's the matter? Have you come to warn us about something?" He doesn't answer, just shifts a little in his chair and lowers his eyes again. Amy knows that she's staring, trying to see through his chalk-white skin to the whorls and spirals of the path that will lead the Doctor in her hall closet to the future Doctor, and lead this future Doctor back to her. "Tell me," she commands. "Are you okay?"

He smiles at her, a ghastly little smile like the expanding edge of a dying star. "I don't think I am, actually, Amy. Amelia Pond." His left hand moves, inching across the surface of the table to grasp her right. She grabs his other hand, not wanting to wait for him to muster up the strength to move again.

"Tell me what's going on," she says, suddenly furious. "Something terrible's going to happen, and you've got to tell me what it is, Doctor. Right now. _Explain_."

"It's all right," the Doctor says softly, and suddenly she's at the center of a collapsing universe, looking into the tangled nest of wires in the heart of Pandorica, and in the middle of it her Doctor, bleeding and broken and determined to burn. "It's all right, Amy, it's already happened for you, but I wanted to see you again - before it happens for me. I'm just a silly old man, getting caught up in subjective timelines. Comes of spending too much time with you humans." He chuckles, despite the faint glistening tears Amy can see on his cheeks. "You know better than I do how all right it's going to be."

And suddenly, horribly, Amy understands. "You're going there, aren't you," she says, managing to choke the words out around the sudden lump in her throat. "You're going to that beach, with the astronaut - River -"

"Hush," the Doctor says, stroking his thumb across the back of her hand. "Spoilers."

"Don't go, you don't have to go there. It can't happen if you aren't there, just go somewhere else. Please, Doctor,I'm begging you - run. Just run!"

"Oh, Amy," he says. "I've been running so long now. And I think the running's over. But it's been a good run, eh?"

Even going to his death, he can smile at her in a way that warms her to her toes.

"Yeah, pretty good," she says. There's a clatter from the hallway, and the faint sounds of Rory shouting for Amy to hurry. The Doctor wiggles his eyebrows, the way that he always did when he wanted her to call him an idiot, and while Amy struggles with laughing or smiling or slapping him, he gets to his feet.

"Well, I think that's about done it for me," he says."You'd best get back there, your Roman's calling. And the rest of your life. Make it a brilliant one, won't you, Pond?"

"Yeah," Amy says quietly. "I will."

The Doctor turns to go. Amy doesn't move for a few seconds, just stares at the door to the garden, watching the Doctor's slow, careful steps out of the corner of her eye. Outside the window is the flat black slab of night, strobed with the occasional distant flash of red and blue from the police cars parked discreetly out front of the neighbor's house. Unthinking, she follows the reflected glint of the siren as it catches the curve of something stashed on top of the refrigerator.

"Doctor, wait!" she calls. He stops with his hand on the handle of the TARDIS door and turns around to see Amy rummaging around the top of the fridge between stacks of unused cookbooks. She finally pulls down a greenish-looking bottle, dusty and unopened. "Take this," she says, coming around the table to hold it out to him. "Rory and I were saving it for something, I forget what, but you'll need it where you're going."

The Doctor takes it from her and examines it from every angle, including upside-down. "Really, Amy, wine? I don't even know if I drink wine."

"You're eleven hundred years old, right? Got to try it sometime."

The Doctor watches her carefully, then nods. "Suppose you're right. How many times are you eleven hundred, after all? Don't answer that," he adds hurriedly.

There's another series of thumps from the hallway, and Rory's voice again, getting nearer. The Doctor pushes the TARDIS door open, but before he can vanish inside Amy blurts out "Wait -" again, and this time when he turns around she puts both hands on his shoulders and leans over on the tips of her toes to kiss him on the forehead, just for a second. When she pulls back, the Doctor gives her a look so fierce and full of gratitude, it makes her think her heart might burst.

Then the floorboards outside the kitchen door are creaking and the Doctor is in the TARDIS and gone. Rory comes in at last to find his wife leaning against the living room wall, staring desperately at nothing, her hair still fluttering in the wind between the worlds. He comes up quietly and puts a hand on her shoulder, then opens his arms as she leans into him like he's the only solid thing on a hysterically spinning planet that's threatening to throw her off. He doesn't ask if she's all right, doesn't ask what happened, because he can tell from her expression that it's something to do with the Doctor, and with the Doctor there are never really answers to questions like that.

When River comes looking for them both a few minutes later, Amy has regained her composure and is trying to convince Rory to leave the final suitcase. River interrupts them mid-bickering to herd them back to the TARDIS, and at a few minutes to midnight the Pond-Williamses vanish into the Void, hurtling towards Emplic and its winged talking trees and singing snows.

Their house stands brightly lit and perfectly still all night, but at 1:30 in the morning the police are called away to the other side of the village, where someone's tampered with a fire hydrant in the square. When they arrive, a crowd has already gathered around the hydrant, which is shooting out jets of water that turn into flocks of purple, stalk-eyed birds and fly away. The police captain just shakes his head and has one of the lads film it with his dashboard cam so he can send the footage to his brother, a DI in London who's been saying he's mad for three years.

No one notices the tweed-clad stranger slipping around the corner into a blue box bluer than any sky.

Of course no one in London would understand. Leadworth is no stranger to Christmas miracles these days.

* * *

><p>Next (and last) chapter will be up eventually. As always, reviews are greatly appreciated, and I love you all. ^_^<p> 


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